Simultaneous recording of photographic film and electronic video images is now well known in the portrait photography art. The recorded video images are typically used as electronic "proofs" of the picture composition before incurring the expense of developing and printing the photographic negatives. A system of this type is shown and described in commonly assigned U.S. Pat. No. 4,805,037 --Noble et al. In general, with such systems, the taking of a picture is initiated by the photographer actuating a shutter release cable which is coupled to the film camera. When this is done, the camera generates a synchronizing signal, typically a flash request signal, which is coupled to an image controller means to synchronize operation of the film camera and flash with the video portion of the system.
A difficulty may be encountered with systems of this type in that, unless precautions are taken, it is sometimes possible to initiate the taking of a picture with the film camera and to activate the flash without simultaneously capturing the video image. This can occur when the video portion of the system is "busy" which may be characterized as any condition that prevents the processing of new video information from the video camera. Examples of conditions that would prevent the taking of a picture might be that there is no floppy disk in the video image recorder unit, or a malfunction has occurred in the video portion of the system, or image information from a previous picture is still being processed and recorded, or simply that the recording disk is full. It is possible, therefore, for the photographer to attempt to take a picture or a series of pictures in sequence, and fail to capture and record some or all of the video images without realizing it until it is too late.
With photographic cameras that utilize electrically operated shutter releases it is known to provide electronic shutter release control signals that inhibit the application of a shutter release signal to the film camera and generation of the flash request signal until an enable signal or "all clear" signal is received from the video image recording apparatus. However, for cameras with mechanical shutter release apparatus, there has not been available a simple, small, relatively inexpensive mechanism that would provide the feature of inhibiting film camera shutter release until the video apparatus is ready to record the next image.
It is therefore an object of the present invention to provide a control system for a simultaneous film and electronic capture system that ensures that the film image will be captured on the electronic image system.
It is also an object of the invention to provide a control system of the type described that is particularly adapted to operate with a film camera having a mechanical shutter release.